The revamped Diner blog is not quite ready for the public yet, so until then, I’ll continue to post Diner related content here!

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The Diner recommends: Diner alumni Kevin Lucia‘s novel Hiram Grange and The Chosen One: The Scandalous Misadventures of Hiram Grange.

I’ll admit. I didn’t understand Hiram Grange at first. The fact is, he’s a super cool dude with a bunch of flaws who doesn’t necessarily want to do the right thing, but is kind of forced into it. (and which one of us doesn’t understand that?!)  Each novel in the series is a stand-alone and Kevin’s is a great (and sometimes gross) read. A little bit Lovecraft, a little bit allegory, and a lot of tension, the payoff at the end is superb.

Hiram Grange doesn’t believe in fate. He makes his own destiny. That’s a good thing, because Queen Mab of Faerie has foreseen the destruction of the world, and as usual… it’s all Hiram’s fault. He must choose: kill an innocent girl and save the universe… or rescue her and watch all else burn. Just another day on the job for Hiram Grange.

Kevin is giving a copy away here or you can purchase a copy here.

Deanna Hershiser

One of my favorite parts of reading submissions is being swept along. Writing that lifts me is writing with a view to a room of my heart’s experience, even when (as is usually the case) I haven’t been through what the author is describing. I’m drawn to reading and writing essays for the joy of absorbing works made by wordy tools and lyrical recipes.

I was pleased this go-round that Relief’s editors chose pieces I really like. They’re stories of building boats and baking bread and attempting rehab. Seemingly insignificant facets of days — a morning walk, an evening on the beach — carry me into meaning, because they were recorded with patience and skill. Repeated returns to the work must have happened for each essay to become finished, ready. Such is the nature of our task. The same is true in “The Art of Work,” where A. S. Peterson’s craft-ful description reminds me that early in a process “it is easy to think the work nearly done. This is a deception.”

As with the best writing anywhere, “finished” doesn’t mean everything’s tied up with a bow by the end. These essays retain questions. Their problems are ancient ones: What is art? Why strive in light of painful separations? What does perfection taste like? They give fodder for our processes, for the spiritual work each of us does to find meaning in our own little spaces and times.

I’ll finish this post with a Cyber Monday notice, fitting because Leslie Leyland Field’s essay for 4.2, “Making the Perfect Loaf of Bread,” is already available in the artful anthology, The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting Toward God. Leslie is the book’s editor, as well, and she has gathered delectables (each essay includes a recipe) from the likes of Wendell Berry, Luci Shaw, and Nancy J. Nordenson.

Here’s to making our way through Monday and into a month of attempts at meaning.

Deanna Hershiser’s essays have appeared in Runner’s World, BackHome Magazine, Relief , and other places. She lives with her husband in Oregon and blogs at deannahershiser.com/stories-glimmer.

Stephanie S. Smith

A tenative tweeter takes a new look at condensed modes of communication after discovering SMITH Magazine’s Six-Word Memoir Project.

As a freelance book publicist, I spend a lot of time using social media to get the word out about new titles, but I have to say: I am not a fan of Twitter.  I’m the kind of person who loves thick novels like Jane Eyre, excuses run-on sentences, and had to be taught the meaning of “succinct” by my 9th grade English teacher. So 140 character “tweets” are just not my thing.

Twitter offers a wealth of information for those who wish to seek it out, but to me it feels like an overwhelming sea of data, a roar of white noise. I also can’t help but feel like it’s a “short-cut”, a way to cut creative corners and at the same time cater to our distracted attention spans.  140 characters is just long enough to snag our interest and just short enough to amuse us but not commit us.

But this past week I discovered a project in succinctness that impressed me.  Instead of 140 characters, try six words! The Six-Word Memoir, an initiative of SMITH Magazine, challenges writers to publish their abbreviated life story on their website.  Inspired by the belief that everyone has a story and deserves a forum in which to tell it, SMITH editors created the Six-Word Memoir Project to give people that opportunity.  With a click, anyone can publish their memoir on the website.  I found myself fascinated with some of their entries…

“Never really finished anything, expect cake.” -Carletta Perkins

“I still make coffee for two.” -Zak Nelson

“Asked to quiet down, spoke louder.” -Wendy Lee

In just six words, people all over the world are telling stories with their own unique voice.  I spent half an hour reading through these memoirs and was amazed that such creativity could be condensed into so small a space.  Some are profound, some humorous, some confessional or bittersweet, but all of them possess a genre and a plot of their own as intricate as any novel.

It takes enough skill to be able to articulate your life story, drawing out significant themes and symbols, but to boil it down to six words and still give the reader a lasting impression? It seems to me that is a craft in its own right.  Perhaps Twitter, a cousin endeavor in brevity, is a higher art than I imagined.

Stephanie S. Smith graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in Communications and Women’s Ministry, which she now puts to work freelancing as a book publicist and writer through her business, (In)dialogue Communications, at www.stephaniessmith.com.  After living in Chicago for four years, traveling to Amsterdam for a spell, and then moving back home to Baltimore to plan a wedding, she now lives with her husband in Upstate New York where they make novice attempts at home renovation in their 1930s bungalow.  She is a member of the Young Professionals of the Southern Tier and blogs for Moody Publishers at www.moodyfiction.com.

Michael Dean Clark

Happy Day after Thanksgiving. Hopefully you’re rested; that the Tryptophan has induced a good night (or half day and then full night) of sleep; that this Friday morning finds you anywhere but shopping at Target or Best Buy.

Don’t get me wrong: there are gifts to find. I’m just hoping you’ll find them outside the crowded box stores and teeming masses of mothers who will cut you for whatever toy is supposed to be worth its weight in violence this year.

This is no anti-capitalist statement. I’m not looking to end up on Glenn Beck’s socialist conspiracy chalkboard (though I’d wear that as a badge of honor and really be touched if he cried when he mentioned my name. I have attended churches that actively seek social justice, so I’m probably a candidate for his list, along with Olbermann’s Worst Person Ever distinction).

Actually, I’m more interested in encouraging people to go find something beautiful. Walk hand-in-hand with a spouse or partner they haven’t seen in awhile. Take their kids to the most beautiful part of the place they call home and actually stay still long enough to enjoy it. Be thankful in the ability we have, as fleeting as it may be, to spend a moment just spending a moment.

Recently, I attended a dinner with John Polkinghorne, a quantum physicist and Anglican priest (and no, those are not mutually exclusive endeavors, but I digress…). Mostly, I spent the evening trying not to prove the academic stereotypes about creative writers true. But I was particularly intrigued by one of Polkinghorne’s assertions.

He said, to be a great scientist or clergyperson – and I read this as a great (fill in the blank) – one must “engage the aesthetic experience.”

In other words, really living means tasting the beautiful rather than gorging ourselves on material things that so rarely provide anything beyond the want of more material joy than they will ever provide. As a writer, these ideas are second nature. I’m just not used to hearing them from a guy who was talking about quarks in the next breath.

Which is why, I think, I’m writing this. Crass consumerism has got nothing on a sunset over the Pacific or snowfall on Lake Michigan. And while Money Never Sleeps (I’m told), it’s no substitute for the time we lose chasing and spending it.

Michael Dean Clark is an author of fiction and nonfiction and an Assistant Professor of Writing at Point Loma Nazarene University. He lives in San Diego with his wife and 2.7 children.